The Big Red Fez - How To Make Any Web Site Better - is a deceptively simple little book that contains some big ideas on the design and marketing of web sites. There are two versions of what happens online, according to Seth Godin: the engineer's version and the marketer's version. Not surprisingly, Seth Godin, the well published marketing guru, sides with the latter version. Quite simply, Seth explains, using a web site is similar to a monkey in a big red fez - no banana, no sale.

The Theme

The clever thing about Seth Godin is that he could have called this little book something like "web site usability"; but then the web techies would have been very disappointed. Instead the book's theme is somewhere between usability and marketing. So if you don't know your backend from you frontend - but want to focus on what makes a successful web site - then this book is for you.

It's All About The Banana

Now I must declare my colours here: I'm a bit of a techie. But I know that no matter how technically proficient my web site is, it will fail if I design it so that only technically proficient web surfers can use it. So I found this book interesting because it was written from a marketing and usability perspective. And the first rule of any web site, according to Seth Godin, is "show me the banana"! Make it big and make it blue (or red) but make it obvious. This is typical of the style of the book with every page pair illustrating some of the common usability issues associated with many web sites.

Technical Users Take Note

Those of you looking for a more rigorous approach to web design and usability will be disappointed. While the book presents a large selection of useful examples covering a range of issues from shopping carts to capturing email addresses, they are all viewed through the marketing lenses of Seth Godin. There's no other viewpoint - no additional references. Occasionally, Seth attempts to widen his focus and expand upon his version of form design. If I tell you this results in a set of fridge magnets, you get to see my point.

Summary

The Big Red Fez is a typical Seth Godin book which attempts to cover a range of web site usability issues - but mostly from a marketing perspective. I say 'typical', because like all Seth Godin's books it is informative and entertaining to read. And this book won't take you long! If you want to expand your horizons in terms of web site usability, then you might like to try Steve Krug's excellent book on the subject called "Don't Make Me Think".

Tetsou